PolARTS offers artists from Switzerland in any discipline supported by Pro Helvetia and scientists the opportunity to collaborate on joint projects and to take part in field trips to a polar region. Launched in 2022, the programme runs on a biennial basis, creating space for new collaborative and explorative practices and supporting transdisciplinary exchange. Three tandems have been selected for the 2026 edition.
The tandems will collaborate over a period of 12 to 18 months. They will meet regularly in a range of contexts, including laboratories, studios, and scientific and artistic events, to share insights into their respective research and professional practices, and to pursue joint research.
Between Rubble and Ice: Unravelling Mountain Permafrost – Rock Glaciers as Sites of Artistic and Scientific Inquiry
Sebastián Vivero / Mayar El Bakry
The tandem consisting of Sebastián Vivero (EPFL, Laboratory of Catchment Hydrology and Geomorphology, CHANGE) and Mayar El Bakry (artistic researcher and designer) brings together artistic practice and environmental science. The project treats rock glaciers as climatic, cultural, and temporal agents-sites where environmental transformation, scientific uncertainty, and cultural memory intersect.
The project approaches rock glaciers and permafrost not solely as objects to be measured but as relational entities that shape how humans inhabit, ritualise, and remember land. Their destabilisation reveals dependencies and assumptions of permanence, opening space for collective reflection through storytelling, ritual, and mourning practices. The project includes joint field trips to the Peruvian Andes and the Swiss Alps.
‘Sustained dialogue between artistic and scientific practices explores rock glaciers not only as environmental objects but as culturally relational spaces, opening ethical and affective dimensions such as loss, grief, and changing human–land relationships.’ – Sebastián Vivero / Mayar El Bakry
In conversation with ice bodies
Saadia Mirza / Daniela Müller
The tandem consisting of Saadia Mirza (anthropologist, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Basel, metaLAB Basel) and Daniela Müller (video artist) brings glaciological sensing practices into dialogue with an artistic practice concerned with orientation, time, and memory in remote places.
The project understands sensing not only as measurement, but as a relational practice between humans and technologies, and between environments and the images, sounds, and concepts through which perception and interpretation take shape. The basis of the collaborative research is a jointly assembled archive, consisting of scientific formats of data collection and representation (datasets, models, maps) on the one hand, and on the other of cultural-historical sources (local narratives, place-specific terminology). This collection is understood as an open research space in which different forms of evidence coexist on equal terms and can be read in relation to one another.
‘We will develop a shared way of working that moves between data, images, sound, mapping, and narrative, making visible what can be translated and what cannot. In doing so, we aim to think with glacial and geologic environments as more-than-human counterparts, entities that carry temporality, register change, and store traces, thereby shaping stories, actions, and possible futures.’ – Saadia Mirza / Daniela Müller
Living Archive of the Third Pole: Cryoconite Holes
Ewa Poniecka / Arden Surdam
The collaboration between Ewa Poniecka (EPFL, River Ecosystems Laboratory) and Arden Surdam (PhD Candidate ZHdK, artist and researcher) brings together artistic practice and cryospheric research (the study of the parts of the Earth’s surface where water exists in frozen form).
The tandem shifts attention toward the micro-scale dynamics of glacier surfaces through cryoconite holes — small, water-filled depressions that host complex microbial communities and play an active role in glacial surface transformation. Artistically, the collaboration builds on contemporary approaches to photography which underscore non-representation and material witnesses. Within this framework, cryoconite holes are understood as patterned, living surfaces rather than visual motifs.
‘By working within both disciplines and alongside one another, we aim to underscore the analogy between the fields in their processes and scales, approaching glaciers not as distant monuments but as dynamic, living surfaces.’ – Ewa Poniecka / Arden Surdam
Header photo credit: © Jean-Vincent Simonet, all rights reserved